Secret to Happiness

I wanted to write on something else this time but after a few things that happen to the people around me, I decided “Secret to Happiness” would be a better topic.

I couldn’t sleep long this morning and was lying in my bed thinking about why people are not happy and what do they mean, when they say “I am UNHAPPY”. Frankly, I keep saying this quite often too. Then after awhile of pondering I started thinking why did I use those words. What was I UNHAPPY with myself?

It was then I knew the state I was in, I started making a list of thing that I thought that made me unhappy so I can go and fix them if they were within my control. Once I made the list, I went past them again like a cute, blonde beautiful waitress in a restaurant (Now, I know what you guys would say so just forget it!!). It was then I knew how stupid I was and how I was measuring my happiness and stress.

After thinking a bit more about this when I was in the shower, I understood the real meaning of “Happiness is a State of mind”. We all were taught that happiness is an abstract word like love during our school days, but somehow people tend to quantify happiness with money. I was doing exactly the same as well (not that I am out of it completely. It’s a real hard job). The likes of Tendulkars, Dravids and the Indian cricket greats; they definitely have the money to be happy. Now trust me think this hard guys “Are they really happy every moment?” They work hard to be where they are, but if they manage to commit a single mistake, the mistake is seen under a microscope magnified and we say “that’s it you idiot give way to others who can”. We don’t think about what they have achieved so far, it is impossible to achieve what they have if they were and are not the best in what they do.

But I don’t mean to say Money is nothing. I am definitely not a fool if you guys think that’s what I am trying to say here. Money is required but you don’t need a lot of money to stay happy. Now this is the most important question “How much money do we need to be happy?” hahaha I wish I could put a number here. But it is this number that defines our lifestyles.

This is the actual fact, the more you expect the expensive your happiness is. These two are inversely proportional.

Life has taught me loads of things and it has also taught me to lower my expectation, so I can push myself into the state of happiness. I have been doing this without my knowledge till today. There is a wall hanger in my home back in India which has the verses from Bhagavath Geetha which mean:

“Whatever happened in the past, happened for the best;

whatever is happening, is happening for the best;

whatever will happen in future, will happen for the best.

Do not repent the past, do not worry for future,

concentrate on your present.

What did you own, that makes you cry on losing?

What did you bring, that you fear losing?

What did you create, that you fear its destruction?

Whatever belongs to you today, belonged to someone else yesterday

and

it will belong to some one else tomorrow. “

--Bhagavath Geetha.

Overall the more you expect, the more you are in the risk of getting depressed.


Having said all these I also want to add this "No Dream is too Big but remember small steps at a time". Also don’t forget to share a small piece of your success with those who need it.

Never Judge a Book By its Cover

First impressions are important mainly because loads of people put way too much faith in them.

Idioms like, "never judge a book by it’s cover," are just ideal. But the saying, "you'll never get a second chance to make a first impression," is the unfortunate reality of our world. Really, though, the saying should be something like "make your first impressions count, because the vast majority of humanity will never take the opportunity to revise the opinions they form from that first encounter."

I hate to see how many people judge other by just the way they look. I know people who are worth more than saying “he’s prick” or “he’s an Idiot”. I know all of us have our own busy lives and we don’t have the time to get to know somebody and hence have started making assumptions about others whom we know nothing or very less about. But this is not a good justification for what we do today.

I am strong believer of words rather then the music in a song. It’s the words that create a meaning to the music. I recently heard somebody say this in Tamil-

“Poiyaga nee yenai Kathalithal,
Meiyaga Uyir thirapen Naan”

Meaning – “Lie to me that you Love me, I will give my life away for real”. The reason I brought this up is that beauty is not just in the way people look and dress but something beyond that. We have heard people say “Beauty lies in the beholder’s eyes” and this beauty is all about features and looks but I believe it’s the character which adds spice to this beauty. At this point I remember seeing a movie “Anbe Sivam” in Tamil, Where a handsome looking guy suspects a bad looking guy to be a terrorist and calls the police and it’s only later after spending weeks with him that he gets know what a character and personality the bad looking guy was!!

The overall essence of what I have been going on about is that people are worth lot more than just of how they look, which race they are from. What cultural background they are from, which religion they believe in. What, we are doing today is an absolute stupidity and we have no idea what we are missing in life.

So Guys start thinking “Nobody is good in everything” and “Everybody has something to offer you”, you will definitely stop judging people and wait till you see the best out of them.

God: Who is he? Where is he? What’s he doing?

Before I start adding my views on this let me make certain things clear about me.

Am I Spiritual? Yes
Am I Religious? Yes
Do I Believe in God? Yes
Do I Believe in Other Religions apart from mine? Yes
Do I Believe in after Life? Yes (But that’s a different topic to be discussed).

All my views are based on the religion I was taught and brought up in as I cannot comment based on things I don’t know much about. It does not mean that I know much about my religion but trying to share what I know of today.

Now Let me get started here, God who is he?

According to some wise people’s views, God is the supreme soul who controls everything. But I think religion is a belief and god is the core of that belief.

I recently happen to see a movie, though it was suppose to be a comedy centred movie, it did have certain things to say about god. Let me put that in detail to you, certain people have certain qualities by birth, it’s a gift to them. Everybody is not good with everything in this world. Some one who can draw cannot write effectively. There are others who are not good at anything, like me ;-). When you are not good at certain things or if you feel you are unlucky with certain things, it is then your confidence level drops. People do various things to bring their confidence level up and one of them is God, when one is depressed and sees the form of God Strong and Powerful, the seeker feels the moral boost that God would definitely be the support for the right thing. Apart from that the other things like fasting, making offering in a temple, pujas etc. are add-ons to the culture. I basically think this is the right way of seeing who god is.

Secondly, where is he?

I betcha, many people would want to know this and why would they want to know this? Just to whine about how bad they are doing in life or asking for a simple way to become the richest man in the world or to get the most secured life. The number of people who thank god for what they are today or who thank him/her for what they have is almost zero when we look at the whole group.

Now forgetting the entire above mentioned issues, does god really reside in the temples? Well my answer is, temple is a sacred place clean, pure and divine and has an architectural importance. Man has learned to direct energy in different way and I believe temples are built in a way to direct energy.

Now coming to the idea of multiple gods in my religion (my religion believes in 330 million (33 crores) gods), is based on a concept every thing living or non living is considered to be divine or sacred. Therefore everything known is ultimately god. So my religion considers the trees as God, the sun as God, the moon as God, the monkey as God, the snake as God and even human beings as manifestations of God! Now this is the best part in my religion.

God doesn’t appear before you with twelve hands and six heads to save you. A person who helps someone in distress is god to him. God is in all forms and he is by your side all the time to support you.

Finally, what is he doing?

If you really read the whole post from the start you would know what he is doing.

To sum the whole post up, God is like the flame on a candle which always points up which ever direction you turn it to, spreading the light evenly around it. So my friends, god is around you.

Now having said this all, the next question that I ask myself is, would I do the same things that the community around me does. Every sect have their own traditions and the way I look at thing like making offering in the temple, doing pujas to be traditional habits. So I will continue with the traditional things that my ancestors have been following till today. I don’t want to kill their ages of believes in a single night. But will keep asking my questions till I get a better answer.

Now there is a saying in Tamil
“arithu arithu manidarai pirathal arithu
athillum arithu manidar ayinum koon kurudu seviduandi pirappal arithu”

Meaning

“Out of the entire living creatures in the world, you are gifted to be born as a human being with the sixth sense. You are even more gifted if you don’t have any kind of deformity by birth”.

So thank the almighty for what he has given you friends. I have expressed my views till today but will never stop hunting for answers on this topic.

I Love my country India..with all the ups and downs..

Hello guys, was just away for awhile with work and other commitments in life and to be honest my thoughts to write have vanished for sometime now. But yesterday night, there was something in me which reminded me to write.

I was on a short trip to India recently. A Three weeks travel to India in the month of May is the best and worse thing you can ask for in life. As most of you know, its holiday season in India. Being in Melbourne for over 5 years I was extremely happy to see the people buzzing around busy and in good holiday mood. But when you are in holidays taking a break from your usual busy life, you want to have a peaceful and easy trip. Anyways I think I have to stop whining about the crowd and the weather, I wanted to write about other things that I saw in India after a year and a half.

India is grown a long way from where it was 61 years ago and this is something which people know. But the growth in certain areas took me back for a minute. I am not a Financial Analyst to analyse where the growth is from and I really don’t care. People say its cause of the growth in the IT and BPO sector. Where ever the growth is from, is it good or bad?

Now let’s see the good parts of the growth:

1. More modern, quality and good infrastructure. Yeah right from the roads to places where you go out to eat or for a night’s entertainment.
2. All international products are now available at a descent price.
3. Pizza Huts, McDonalds, KFCs, Subways are all over the place.
4. Designer goods can be seen everywhere.
5. A lot of flow and movement in cash.
6. Banking has become a lot easier and a lot cheaper.
7. Things happen much quicker in government and other sectors but still not up to the standards
8. Excellent growth in the real estate market.
And above all the affordability in India is grown a long way. You can see people every where ready to spend any kind of money to enjoy the growth of the country.

But the flip side of the Growth:

1. Every thing is expensive nothing is cheap. I use to boast to my Australian friends, that we all here are idiots to spend the kind of money that we use to. But I can no longer do that.
2. The cost of day to day living has gone up a long way.
3. People’s idea of saving for the future is detoriated. People have started doing a lot of other things these days.
4. Agriculture, the Indian feeding business is no longer the same.

Every change has the impacts in different sectors of people. These above changes, I believe helps only the upper class or the educated sect of people. I can still see people struggling to make their daily life a bit easier.

Now though there is money and more educated people than it use to be 10 years ago, people’s attitude towards other hasn’t changed a bit. Public responsibility is something that I can hardly see. For an example, I was in Chennai at the Mount Road Signal close to Spencers. I saw a guy who was neatly dressed with a Tie, in an expensive motor bike, polished shoes waiting in the signal next to my Car. The first thing that he did right after stoping his bike for signal was to spit in the middle of the road. It’s just not this, but to survive successfully in India, their idea of living is ignore other and push yourself to what you want to achieve right from waiting in the queues, driving in the traffic to your daily day to day stuff. Education hasn’t improved peoples mentality or attitude towards the community.

When I think of all this, I could remember the words from Shankar’s Movie Sivaji… “ Ellam Vanthuduchu…anna ithu innum pogalla” (Meaning Everythings is here and this hasn’t changed)…so simple in India rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer…

Beware my Indian friends…a country’s growth is not just in its economic growth but in the minds of the people as well. Good luck to all of us who want to see India as the best nation to live in the world.